"It all went wrong when we left the gold standard," says Dominic Lawson in the UK's Independent. From his column:

There is, however, a small band of men and women – long insulted as fanatics or even fantasists by the political mainstream – who can now say: "We told you so." I am not referring to the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist). No, I'm talking about the followers of the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973). in his 1912 work, The Theory of Money and Credit, Mises declared that the corruption and distortion of money by the state and bankers, usually to pay for wars, was the principal cause both of inflation and – to coin a phrase – boom and bust.

As the chief economic advisor to the Austrian government in the 1920s, Mises put his theories into practice and slowed down inflation in his native country (which, as a Jew, he later fled). He used his "cycle" theory to forecast that the "New Era" of apparently permanent prosperity in the 1920s was illusory, and that it would end in runs on banks and depression: The Wall Street crash of 1929 was exactly what Mises had predicted.

Mises believed that any currency which was not backed by gold was powerless to resist the depredations of governments and bankers addicted to the possibilities of limitless credit. Until the past few weeks, this has been seen as a bizarrely old-fashioned and eccentric outlook; but I would not be surprised if many young people – who have hitherto been comfortable with the idea of money as something which can just exist in the ether, travelling through the digital highway – now wonder whether anything of intrinsic value lies behind it all.

As far as Mises was concerned, even money made of paper, if it had nothing behind it other than the good word of politicians and central bankers, was inherently unsound; he lived just long enough to see the United States of America – where he ended his days – break decisively with the international Gold Standard.